


Blood Stains

by EmmaArthur



Series: Whumptober 2019 [10]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Whump, Heavy Angst, Hospital, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Waiting, Whumptober, for now, grevious injuries, handwavy medical stuff, head injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-14 00:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21006782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaArthur/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: Follow-up to Mud Stains. The gang have found Alex, but he's badly hurt, and they don't know if he's going to make it. Michael is a mess.





	Blood Stains

**Author's Note:**

> This is dark and heavy, people. 
> 
> Also I wrote most of this after midnight and I'm posting it at 1:30am without rereading, so it's pretty rough.
> 
> [injuries, blood, medical procedures, head injury, hospital]

Michael doesn't know how long has passed since Alex lost consciousness. Minutes. He feels like the hurricane went through him instead of around him, though there's also a rush inside his chest stronger than anything acetone has ever given him. He could move the world. He could sleep for a year.

None of that matters, when Alex is almost dead in his arms.

What he's done hasn't reached him yet. He knows, intellectually, that he just killed five people, but the consequences are for later. Right now he only feel numb, and cold. So cold.

No, Alex is cold under his hands. His skin is clammy, caked with blood, and far too cold.

Michael searches frantically, and finds a pulse at his neck, faint. He sobs in relief and fear and pain. Hands are touching him, trying to take Alex from him, but he won't let them. He won't let Alex go ever again.

“We have to get him to a hospital,” he hears, but the voice is muffled, as if coming through a wall. Liz, Michael thinks.

“We have to get back to Roswell.” Valenti.

“But he needs−”

“Yeah, he needs a hospital quickly, but the closest hospital from here with the surgery equipment he needs is in Albuquerque. If we call 911 now, they'll take him to Soccoro, then assess and _maybe_ get him to Albuquerque. It'll take longer than if we drive back to Roswell, where I know we have the equipment and I know the surgeons. Plus I don't know how you want to explain how he got in this state, let alone how he got _here_.”

“Fuck, you're right,” Liz mutters. Michael's mind is getting clearer, though he's confusedly still not letting anyone approach.

“I could wipe their minds if we need to,” Isobel offers.

“Too many people,” Liz decides. “We can't hide it from a whole hospital. If we get him back to Roswell, Kyle can sign on it, say that he's alerted the authorities. We can even bring in his mother, she likes Alex, right? If we tell her Jesse Manes did this−”

“Then we don't have to tell her about aliens,” Valenti completes.

“Will Alex make it to Roswell?”

“I need to examine him to make sure, but he's held on so far, and most of his injuries seem to date a few days. The most worrying is the head wound.”

“We need to get Michael off him,” Liz says.

“Guerin,” Valenti's voice is closer now. “Guerin.”

Michael blinks. It's like his body won't obey anymore. He can hear his name, but it's not right. No, Alex is the one who matters. Alex.

“Michael!” Isobel snaps him out of it. Michael looks up at her, blearily.

“You have to let him go.”

He shakes his head. No, he can't do that. If he lets Alex go, he might never get back. Alex is his sanity.

“I need to examine him,” Valenti says, pulling at his arm.

Michael shakes him off.

“Michael, Alex needs medical attention,” Isobel tries. “Right now. Please.”

“You can stay, just let me get to him, okay?” Valenti adds.

Michael tilts his head at that and nods slowly. He moves so that Alex is lying more on the floor, with just his head on Michael's lap, and he keeps one hand on Alex's too cold cheek, the one that's not cut. Valenti nods at the edge of his vision and kneels beside them.

Michael watches him check Alex over, lingering on his head wound. It doesn't look good. It's still bleeding sluggishly, on the right side of his head, above the temple.

“I don't think there's any spine injury, so we can move him if we're careful,” Valenti says after a while. “He needs surgery as soon as possible on his arm though, and I'm really worried about a brain hemorrhage. We have to get back fast.”

“He seized,” Michael articulates, when he realizes that the others didn't see that.

Valenti close his eyes. “It's not good. I hope he'll make it back to Roswell, but it's still our best option. I have material in the car. Since Max−I've been more prepared. I can probably keep him stable.”

“Okay,” Liz says. “Tell us what to do.”

They get moving fast after that, deciding that Maria will drive back Alex, Michael and Valenti while Flint, Isobel, Liz and Rosa stay to cover their tracks as best as possible. The bodies are bound to be found at some point, and it might as well be sooner than later, but the crime scene can't be tracked back to them.

Michael doesn't care about all that. He keeps his hand around Alex's uninjured one the whole time, letting them work around him. Kyle asks him to get Alex to the car, as his telekinesis is the smoothest way to accomplish that, and he obeys. He should be amazed at how perfect his control is, how strong his powers are, effortlessly lifting Alex while bracing his broken arm and his prosthetic, but he doesn't care.

Alex is the only one who matters.

The ride back is a nightmare. Michael drove on the way out, needing something to do with his hands and his mind, but now he doesn't have that. He would be incapable of driving straight if he tried. Instead, Maria is at the wheel, and he and Valenti are squished into the back seat, Alex lying on their laps. Michael refused to let Alex go enough to get into the front seat, though their position is impossibly uncomfortable.

Michael removes Alex's prosthetic, wincing at how much the stump is red and swollen, and keeps a sliver of telekinesis around his broken arm to act as a splint. Valenti does his best to clean up Alex's head wound and the cuts on his face. After that, all they can do is wait and pray to a God Michael doesn't believe in.

Alex seizes two more times during the journey, but he doesn't stir. Michael doesn't dare ask Valenti what that means, because the lost look on Valenti's face can't be good. He wants to believe that Alex will be okay. He hangs on to Alex's shallow breathing, to the faint hint of his pulse.

Alex is rushed in for scans as soon as they make it to the hospital, and Valenti leaves Michael and Maria in the waiting room to go with him. Michael dearly wants to refuse to leave Alex again, but he's more lucid now than he was hours ago. He knows waiting any longer could get Alex killed.

Sometimes being responsible hurts.

“Sit,” Maria guides him to a chair. She sits down beside him. “Are you injured?” she asks, motioning at his chest.

Michael looks down at his shirt. It's covered in bloodstains. Most of it is Alex's blood, he thinks, but it could be the men he killed, too. “No,” he murmurs. “Not mine.”

“Okay.”

They're not speaking to each other, but right now, it doesn't matter. Michael opens his arms, and Maria hugs him tightly, sobbing. Michael doesn't cry. He's too numb for that.

They huddle up in a corner, on the floor instead of on the seats. Valenti will find them when he has news, wherever they are. Isobel texts Michael, to ask about Alex, as the same time as Liz texts Maria, but they don't have anything to share.

Maria lies her head on Michael's shoulder. “I'm so scared,” she murmurs.

“Me too,” Michael admits. It's not the same as the six days from hell he's just had, not knowing where Alex was, or if he was alive. It's a different kind of scared.

He's not sure his heart can take it.

His brain keeps trying to go down the same beaten paths it has for days. What if Alex doesn't make it? What will Michael do if he dies? Can he live without Alex?

The only answer he can come up with is _no_.

“What are we gonna do?” Maria asks. “If−”

“No,” Michael stops her. “Don't. Please.”

“Liz says they're leaving now, they'll be here in six hours or so.”

“Okay.” It's already the middle of the night, and it will be morning by the time they arrive. Michael wants to text Isobel to be careful, but he doesn't have the energy.

Even though energy is buzzing under his fingertips. It's not leaving him. Michael remembers, how Max was after killing Noah, when he healed his hand.

Max. Fuck.

Michael can't lose someone else. Not now. Not ever.

He really, really can't lose Alex.

His hands are shaking, and the cups of coffee Maria got them are levitating. They fall down as soon as Michael notices, and one of them turns over and spills. Maria rights it, and her hands shake, too.

Michael buries his face in her shoulder. “Fuck,” he murmurs, over and over. “Fuck.”

Valenti comes back after over an hour. “He's going into surgery,” he says.

“Aren't you scrubbing him?” Maria asks him the question on Michael's mind.

“No. I want to, but we're too close. It's too easy to make bad decisions because of fear. And Alex can't afford that.”

Michael opens his mouth, because none of that makes sense, and Valenti is Alex's friend, isn't he, why isn't he with him since he's the only one they'll let in, but he doesn't say anything. It doesn't matter. It won't make Alex get miraculously better.

“The surgeon is my boss,” Valenti adds. “I trust her. She'll do whatever's needed.”

Maria nods. Michael looks through Valenti.

“I won't go into medical details, but he has a brain hemorrhage. That's the most pressing thing. They'll try to reduce the pressure, hopefully lessen the damage.”

“Lessen?” Michael repeats.

Valenti looks down. “It's bad. He's seized twice more in the last hour. The chance of brain damage is very high.”

“What does that mean?” Maria asks.

“I don't know yet. It could be anything from...epilepsy, memory loss, loss of...I don't know,” Valenti coughs, and Michael can see the tears in his eyes. That's why he can't operate on Alex, he understands. He's too emotional.

“Is he going to wake up?” Michael asks. That's the important thing. Anything else, they can deal with it. Probably.

Valenti shakes his head. “I don't know.”

He sits down with them after that, on the floor. Rivalries and past griefs don't exist anymore, not now. Michael lets them both hug him and wait with him.

Alex isn't out of surgery when the girls make it back. They come directly to the hospital, even though none of them has slept since yesterday. Michael rejects any food, but he takes the touches, the human contact he desperately craves, even though what he really needs is to touch Alex.

The surgeon looks exhausted when she comes out, and she won't talk to any of them but Flint because they're not family.

Michael wants to shout that Alex's family did this to him.

His eyes meets Flint, and somehow he sees the same desire in the man's gaze.

Neither of them says anything, though. Valenti pulls the surgeon aside and she talks to him, because he's a doctor in this hospital. She's willing to close her eyes on who he repeats everything to, because he's also a friend.

“He's alive,” Valenti says when he comes back.

There's a rush of relief going through Michael, that manifests in Liz's handbag floating suddenly. She catches it quickly, looking around to make sure no one saw. “Michael,” she mutters, and Michael apologizes with a look.

Alex is alive.

Valenti's long face, though, tells him he's not finished.

“He probably won't wake up for a day or so at least, _if_ he wakes up.”

Liz puts a hand over her mouth. “He might not?”

Michael just grows cold again.

“It's impossible to say. The brain hemorrhage is contained, but we don't know what functions it will have damaged. We'll know more when−if he wakes up.” 

Valenti is close to tears saying that, and the girls are beyond that. Michael's eyes are dry, but the power in him wants to destroy something.

“Assuming he wakes up, he'll need extensive surgery for his arm. They've done the minimum to stabilize it, but the head wound was more important. Even in the best scenario, he'll have a long recovery ahead of him.”

“He's already done it once,” Flint speaks up for the first time. “He can do it again.”

“I hope so,” Valenti answers. “I really hope so.”

Michael refuses to leave the hospital. He won't g o any further from Alex than he absolutely  has to. Everyone else goes home, at least for a shower, but he doesn't. Kyle shows him to the staff shower instead, and gives him a pair of scrubs to replace his blood-stained clothes.

A fter over three hours, he's allowed inside the ICU. Alex can only have one visitor at a time, but they all vote for him to go. Michael steels himself and walks in with as much confidence as he can muster, though his insides are cold and dark.

Alex is paler than he's ever seen on the white pillow. His head is covered in bandages, so much that his hair isn't even visible, and his face is lax, his eyes closed.  His chest is bare, but it's bruised all over, and Michael can barely find an inch of skin that isn't black and blue or bandaged. His right arm is resting against him in a temporary cast, and his legs are covered by a sheet.

Michael takes his uninjured hand in his and begs him to wake up, sobbing.

After that, in the next two days he spends mostly glued to Alex's side, he doesn't cry and he doesn't say a word. He takes food when it's given to him, though he barely has the coordination to brink a fork to his mouth, and Liz has to literally drag him out of the ICU to get him to eat. He sleeps sitting up, his hand around Alex's. He wakes up from nightmares screaming and almost gets kicked out twice, and only Valenti's pleading works on the strict ICU nurses.

H e feels the Airmen's necks snapping, again and again, and energy builds up inside him. It's not the kind of energy he can use to stay awake. It's destructive. It's pain, and anger. Nothing else.

It's fear. It feeds on his fear that Alex won't wake up, fear that become more real with every hour.

After a day, he doesn't feel the hugs from the others anymore. They support each other. Michael is in his own world, and his world is reduced to Alex's breathing, to the beep that signals that his heart is still alive. There's no telling if the rest of him is still here.

He sits, immobile, until his body can't take it anymore, and then he goes to pace in the corridor outside for a minute, and comes back in.

H e goes back to the scrapyard only once: when the buzzing in his fingertips gets so bad that he can't focus on anything else anymore. The power inside him is scary. It would terrify him, if he wasn't already as terrified as he can be.

Losing control takes second place, by far, to losing Alex.

But things are randomly floating around him, including, once, the whole snack machine, and when Liz tries to take his arm to stop him, he throws her against the wall without meaning to. They all gang up on him after that.

Isobel drives him back to the scrapyard.  She guides him with one hand on his shoulder, to sit on the dirt floor, in the back where there are only totaled cars that won't be missed, then she goes back to her car.

Michael lets go as soon as she's safely away. The metal pieces, and soon whole cars, start whirling around him, faster than his eyes can track. 

Michael contemplates them for a while, his mind settling as the pace of the whirlwind grows. The only two things that have ever been able to do that are music, and Alex.

Alex.

Michael looks up at the sky, and he screams. He screams all the pain and the rage and the fear. He screams his hate for Jesse Manes, and he whispers his dread for Alex. He claps his hands above his head, and the now molten metal clashes together, falling in one large structure, that explodes into pieces when it reaches the floor.

Alex.

Michael stands up, tears running down his face.

The pressure is gone. For now.

Isobel comes out of her car when he approaches her, her phone in her hand. She waves at him, so Michael runs to her. “What is it?” he asks, his stomach dropping.

Isobel takes a deep breath.  “He's awake.”

**Author's Note:**

> Third part (Whumptober day 14) will have Alex actually awake, at least. But this isn't a "he recovered and they lived happily ever after" kind of fic, I'm sorry to say. I can promise no character death, though.
> 
> I'm really sorry for all the angst, folks. Don't know where it comes from.


End file.
